Terence's @rchive

Arrived in Taipei late in the evening 2 days ago. Before heading to the hotel, I led my group of customers to Shilin Night Market (士林夜市) to have dinner.

Introduced them some local delicacies like the famous Hot Star Large Fried Chicken (豪大大鸡排), fried oysters (蚵仔煎) and fried oyster bihun (vermicelli) – 蚵仔面线.

Long queue to buy the large chicken chop

Hotstar Large Fried Chicken 豪大大鸡排

Per piece is NTD50. I queued up to buy a few to treat my customers. After I bought, the guide came and tell me that he can cut queue, no need to line up….. dammit wasted my time.

Chicken chop production line

Their business is really good, non stop frying of chicken chops. It does taste really good. Crispy on outside and juicy inside. I gave away all the chickens I bought because I tried it a few times already. I want to try other foods.

Beef Steak

Cream of corn soup and garlic bread

I end up having my favorite food, beef steak at this big beef streak specialist shop. The name of the shop is 大统一牛排专卖店 Big Consolidation Beef Steak specialist shop (direct translation).

As I walked into the stall/stop, the waiter ushered me into an available seat, it was packed with people. I ordered streak medium well. Shortly the waiter came back with a bowl of cream of corn soup, garlic bread and utensils packed inside a paper bag. 5 minutes later, the steak is served. This is the 1st time I had my steak served up to me in such a short time.

The steak came with a sunny side up egg beside it on a hot plate. The whole set meal of steak with egg, soup, garlic bread and a cup of tea cost only NTD150. Quite value for money and the steak tasted quite all right. Soup very watery and plain. Bun okok only.

Shop that sells Pig Kidney Soup

Then I came across this shop that sells mainly pig internals. I’m don’t eat animal’s internal organ except pig’s kidney. The pig kidney soup signboard caught my attention, I sat down and ordered Pig Kidney Vermicelli (猪腰子面线) to try out the taste.

Full of pig kidneys

The vermicelli

The pig kidney tasted how it should taste. As for the soup, too much of sesame oil in it but the vermicelli taste quite good. Was too full to finish eating all the vermicelli, I just finished all the kidneys. This bowl cost NTD100.

Walkway

Walkway between the shops in Shilin Night Market. The traders will try to persuade you to eat in their shop its very competitive there.

Shop selling friend oysters

I’m not recommending this shop, its just a one of the shop that sells fried oysters. I think Malaysia fried oysters still taste way better, but whoever that never try it before should try it out.

Fruit juice stall

There are also many juice stalls that sells big varieties of juices and bubble teas.

This is just the food area of Shilin Night Market, we only had 1 hour so no time to venture to the actual night market which sells other things.

I have to dig out those old photos that I took from previous trip to show the night market but its quite late already and I need to wake up at 6AM tomorrow to go Kaoshiong, so I will stop here. I might post more stuffs of this Taiwan trip tomorrow if I have time and Internet access.

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Went on a scouting trip to Taiping last last weekend to check out the Kamunting Wild Boar Temple – Om Sakthi Sri Jada Muneesvarar Alayam because I need to lead 2 group tours there starting tomorrow.

There have been rumors going around that touching the wild boars will be able to strike lottery. This has been reported before in NST last year and with the rumors going around, a lot of my aunties customer are very interested to go touch them.

Thanks to Malsingmaps.com and Garmin GPS, I just punch in the temple name and navigate straight from Batu Pahat to Taiping and then to the temple without getting lost. It took me 6 hours to reach Taiping from Batu Pahat including a brief stop at Bidor for duck leg noodles. Will write more about the good food I found throughout my journey in the next post.

I arrived at Taiping and checked in to Panaroma Hotel in Taiping town around 5PM. Went to buy 4D numbers to be blessed by the wild boars and then head straight to the temple in Kamunting. I arrived around 6PM at the temple. It wasn’t hard to find the temple since I am equipped with a GPS. To get there, just get to the Tesco in Kamunting. Facing Tesco, there’s a Taman Zenith to the left, just drive deep into the taman and you will see some Indian guys there selling nasi lemak as food to offer to the boars. They will point you to the path to the temple. I bought 3 packs of nasi lemak from them, each pack cost RM2 and there are 2 portions inside each pack.

People feeding wild boars

When I arrived at the temple, I didn’t expect to see so many wild boars roaming around. I thought they will be hiding in the forest and only come out when its feeding time. And I didn’t expect they would roam around so freely among humans. I guess after so many visitors that visited this place, they are very used to being around humans already. There are many cute little wild piglets running swiftly around  and several fully grown boars. The young ones are still quite shy and won’t let you get close to them unless you temp them with food.

Young boars

Adult Female Wild Boar

Wild Piglet

Think its cuter to call it a piglet than a boar.

Feeding compound

This is to separate the boars and humans. From the previous photos I saw of this place, thousands of people came here pushing and shoving trying to touch the boars. I guess since the boars are now more tamed they are allowed to roam outside of the enclosure.

Jungle where the wild boars come out from

The boars come and go from this forest behind the temple.

The food I bought to lure the wild boars

Getting my luck....

Two of my 4D lottery tickets fell on the floor while I was trying to stroke my ticket on the the boar’s body, luckily didn’t get eaten by it.

Getting my lottery ticket blessed

Sleeping Wild Boars

They even dare to sleep at the temple area where humans are walking around and making noise.

Feeding the boars

When I was trying to feed a bunch of them, they swarmed me to get food from me. 1 bite me on my jeans and its teeth scratch my thighs and bleed a little. Had to throw away the food on my hands to get away from them.

Eating its food without unwrapping

Rain. Humans and pigs running for shelter

The temple

Om Sakthi Sri Jada Muneesvarar Alayam

Lord Muneesvarar is behind the curtain

Joss sticks and lotus candles

For 10 ringgit, you get a bunch of joss sticks, a lotus shaped candle and a bunch of flowers. The lotus candle and flowers can be offered to Lord Muneesvarar. If not just placed them in front of other god statues.

Each lotus candle has a lucky number on it

My lucky number (but didn't strike....)

More crowd coming...

This is the path behind Taman Zenith leading to the temple.

Cooking 10kg of rice each time to feed the boars

3 cans of sardines are cooked together with the rice

The boars are fed 4 times a day. So the temple in total cook 40KGs of rice + 12 cans of sardines each day for the boars.

Lining up to be blessed by Lord Muneesvarar

People started lining up around 6:40PM. We need to take off our shoes around this area. The floor was wet due to the rain, it was quite uncomfortable standing in the puddle of water where many foots had soaked in while waiting for my turn to get blessed.

Getting blessed by Lord Muneesvarar

I am blessed!

I lighted the lotus candle and pass to the priest together with the bunch of flowers to offer to Lord Muneesvarar. In return I get be smoked by the holy fire and some ashes rubbed on my forehead.

Sardine Rice

Feeding time

More wild boars coming out of the jungle to eat

Golden wild boar?

Nah…. this fella just came out from a mud bath. Wonder who dares to stroke it….

A lot of wild boars came out from the jungle

The only male boar I saw with tusks. Check out its red eyes

Plenty of food for everyone

Rubbing my RM50. Had to find a non wet area to rub....

3 legged wild boar. The most lucky boar at the temple according to a keeper there

Everyone were trying to rub him. I tried as well but he was so covered with mud, my lottery ticket end up being muddy and dirty after rubbing off him.

Cute wild piglet

Quite a eye opening experience. It strange and funny that a small temple beside a jungle can get so famous because of the “lucky” wild boars. Not so lucky to me because I didn’t strike lottery. Burned around RM100 on 4Ds -_-…. $%#&*(#

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